


come spring (my lovely girl, learning to let go)

by fightingtheblankpage



Series: lovely!verse [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:45:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingtheblankpage/pseuds/fightingtheblankpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Persephone (how lovely she is, all grown up). I don't think it makes much sense on its own. Lydia leaves to see the world and take it, and Peter follows her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come spring (my lovely girl, learning to let go)

Lydia doesn’t like dramatic gestures – not usually, anyway, not when she’s got no one to impress – and anyway, she’s not doing this for them or **_to_** them. She’s doing it for herself (to herself? Not really), because she needs it, because she’s choking, because she’s so much more.

And so she doesn’t do anything like ditching her mobile in the first thrash can she sees, or leaving a suicide note behind. She texts each and every one of them the same message: ‘I’m perfectly fine. I want to do this. Don’t look for me, because you won’t find me anyway.’ They keep calling her, of course, because they can’t understand the notion of somebody choosing to be **_free_**. They don’t see it that way. They are happier in clusters.

Lydia doesn’t pick up her phone, lets it all go to voicemail. And they leave her messages, which she then listens to when she’s in a cab or waiting for a plane, when a train is late or when she’s sipping coffee and feels particularly wistful. It’s not like Lydia doesn’t like them, after all. If anything, she loves them. But sometimes it’s not about love.

(Jackson’s message is equal parts worried and angry. ‘You can’t just take off like that, Lydia,’ he tells her. ‘We **_have_** something here, and you were the one who told me I need to work on relationships, not shut myself away.’ Lydia smiles fondly at that. Her Jackson, her sweet Jackson, so lost.

‘Lydia,’ Stiles says pleadingly. ‘I get it that you need some space, but maybe– Hey, if you feel like talking, just give me a call. We can figure this out, the pack doesn’t need to know.’ She’s fond of Stiles, even if his shadows are dark. Lydia misses the boy who once loved her, but she knows they both had to move on and grow to be ready for other things.

‘Call me, Lydia,’ Derek says simply. ‘The pack should be together. If it’s Peter‒’ His message comes right after Stiles’, and Lydia can almost see them, with Stiles insisting and Derek angry and afraid, because he wants to give in.

‘Oh, Lydia,’ Allison says. ‘Sweetheart, what’s up with you? Why haven’t you told me anything?’ In the background, Lydia can hear Scott, ‘We miss you!’ Scott is the least artificial of them all, and Lydia takes a moment to appreciate him.

She gets messages from Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, too, but those are obligatory, and Lydia doesn’t do false niceties, so she erases them without any hard feelings.

Her parents think she’s on a scholarship in Europe. They’ve learnt not to ask too many questions. They’ve learnt that Lydia isn’t **_theirs_**.)

There are no books that Lydia can turn to, no specialists who could explain her what’s going on in her head. Lydia prefers it that way – she likes coming to her own conclusions, and she’s good at it. Lydia snatches answers out of thin air and from the inside of her mind. It’s all there, hidden and buried, but once the seed’s been planted, it’s just a matter of time.

Lydia takes long strolls inside her own mind, going farther than she’s ever dared, breaking down walls. She embraces the memories that she once repressed, and finds that the more she’s honest with herself, the more the world becomes unlocked, until it’s not just a background for her life. It’s actually there for the taking, everything within her reach, and Lydia discovers that people want to give it all to her, that there are those of them who appreciate her wits and her never-failing plans. They swarm to her, and she graciously lets them, and then dances away from them.

Peter catches up with her on an airport in Prague. Lydia is sitting, her legs crossed, watching airplanes disappear in the sky and appear in her vision, descending from the clear sky. It’s overwhelming; every one of them is filled with people, and people are filled with shadows that follow them everywhere they go.

Lydia knows all their secrets, and she could use them, but she doesn’t want to. It’s the knowledge that every single thing she sees is hers for to take, have, destroy or build that pushes her forward. Let them go on with their lives. Lydia has no use for them other than as a faceless mass.

Peter sits next to her, silent but smiling ‒ pleased. Not for the first time Lydia thinks he’s the only one that is real, a sharp contrast against the dream-like cities she walks every day and night. The boy-man from her dreams. From her nightmares.

Neither one of them has any luggage with them. Lydia uses credit cards that she knows nobody could track down, tricks that are entirely her own and because of that so unexpected. Lydia is something new entirely, and she doesn’t feel like putting any name to this. Names are unnecessary, not when there is nobody to use them. How do you call something that is one of a kind?

And yet Peter finds her, and he borders the same plane that she does, so he must’ve known her intentions beforehand. Lydia doesn’t have to wonder about how he knew where she is. He simply did, just like she always knows where to look for **_him_**. They have been tied, they have been bonded, they are‒ **_this_**. No name for it, no need for a name.

They are high in the sky, with clouds like tangible things outside the frost-silver windows and the air recycled and old, when Lydia says, “You’re an omega now. With no pack.”

Peter watches her. He’s always watching her, and he must already know every detail by heart, every frown and every gentle curl of hair. Lydia knows what she is, knows she **_deserves_** the undivided attention he gives her, but at another lever she **_wonders_**. Wonders if it’s all because his death is in her hands, or for another reason entirely that Peter chases her across the world, through continents, over oceans.

“I think we can both agree that I’m not, in fact, without a pack,” Peter says. He gives her his winning smile, the one that he wore when he pulled her in with soft words and praises.

Lydia doesn’t say anything to that, but something settles in her. For the first time in years Lydia isn’t certain. She can’t capture that unwavering sureness that keeps her being herself. (She likes the feeling. She likes a challenge, and so few things are a challenge to her these days.)

Lydia doesn’t know something. Lydia doesn’t know if she’s better off with Peter as a quiet presence at her side, or with him on the other side of the planet.

She lets him follow.

***

On some days, Lydia considers taking back what she gave to Peter. It’s hers, he knows it’s hers to take or do with as she pleases. She doesn’t, because Peter puts it in her hands time and time again, tells her that he **_wants_** her to keep his life.

“It’s yours, so how can I give it to you, my lovely Lydia?” he asks when Lydia tells him how she hates it. There is a difference between taking and being willingly given, though, and Peter knows it. And so he disarms her every day, leaves her lost and vibrant with anger that may be something else.

On other days, Lydia craves to snatch it all and keep close to her heart, so that nobody can steal it. Lydia is possessive and she’s a sore loser – would be, if she’s ever lost – and she’s also **_possessed_** by that thought. The world is Lydia’s, but not like Peter is. Sometimes she just wants to lock him up and keep him safe.

(She would take him apart, piece by piece. First his skin, hidden from her eyes, surely tasting of ash and rotting wolfsbane. Then his muscles that allow him those smiles, and casual hands on the small of her back, little flicks of his fingers to her curls. Then his tendons, hard strings that she could wrap around her own fingers. His veins, with the thick red liquid in them. His insides, all of them, not just his heart. Slick and slimy, spilling from her hands, little biological things that make him **_tick_**. His bones, white and breakable, if she wanted them to be just that. The very marrow of his bones, to see if he’s honest when he’s telling her that she’s crawled so deep inside him it’s impossible to remove her. She’d pluck out his eyes, cut out his tongue, store his tantalising brain away. Just to have it, just to touch it, just to mark it.

Lydia would try to remove herself, and if it worked, she’d punish him for his lie. Lydia knows deception and fraud, but Peter is **_hers_** and he’s always been honest with her, always. It’s others who kept things from her.

Not anymore.)

“I hate you sometimes,” Lydia tells Peter when they are in the Mountains, facing high slopes, dwarfed by their stone-and-ice grandeur. “For letting me sleep for so long.”

They are bigger than mountains, they are more than stars, they are never-ending and they are **_something else entirely_**.

Peter smiles at her and leads her to the Meadow, across soft grass, names birds for her when they start singing.

“You woke me up,” Lydia tells Peter when they are by the Sea, facing infinite greyness, dwarfed by its restless monsters-like waves. And then, “It’s not about love. I don’t want it to be about love.”

They are more unstoppable than all the seas, they are overwhelming like water, they are all-seeing and all-consuming and they are what they were supposed to be from the very start.

Peter smiles at her and takes her hand, leads her towards the Sands, across slippery dunes, and names the truth for her when silence closes in around them, “You are very young, my lovely Lydia. You will learn new truths and discard the old ones, and then you will tell me what you want. But it will be me you tell it to.”

His hand is firm against hers, so very real when he intertwines their fingers together. Lydia thinks they are close enough to be on the verge of merging, skin to skin, muscle to muscle, sinew to sinew and veins to veins, until bones press together and Peter’s in the very marrow of them.

Lydia steps closer and lets go.


End file.
